Up the Odds of Achieving Your Social Media Goals with Paid Media

February 7, 2019

When everyone flocks to the hottest club in town, the atmosphere takes on an exciting vibe. While it can be fun breaking out the moves with a crowd of fellow partiers, it can also feel a bit claustrophobic. Sometimes you want to break free and hog the spotlight!

It can feel that way as a social media manager. The good news is that more of the people (in fact, nearly all of the world’s professionals) you’re trying to reach are on LinkedIn. And they’re engaging, with more likes, comments, and content shares.

They’re also growing increasingly savvy to outdated digital marketing tactics. It’s great when people discover your content. But today, you need to combine an organic and paid presence to truly captivate your target audience. In other words, it’s no longer enough to focus on just paid or organic social. It’s not even enough to invest in both unless you integrate the two strategies. Organic is a flywheel for paid: Alone, they are powerful; together, they are unstoppable.

As LinkedIn continues growing, now is the perfect time to get ahead of the curve and take advantage of this new social media strategy (while it’s still the hottest in town).

Unlock Your Brand’s Potential on LinkedIn

If your content offers value, give it a boost to make sure even more of your target audience gets a shot at consuming and sharing it. Your organic reach gives you a solid foundation for investing in paid media to further expand your reach. By testing and optimizing to figure out which posts resonate most with your target audience, you know precisely which content to feature in your paid media. Promoting your top-performing content with Sponsored Content in turn exposes your LinkedIn Page to new audiences who will engage with your steady stream of organic content. It’s a virtuous circle.

Start with a Strong Foundation

You need five organic posts on your LinkedIn Page to get started with LinkedIn ads so develop your organic content strategy with that in mind. Here’s how to build a strong and effective organic social presence on LinkedIn:

1. Optimize your LinkedIn Page. Every year, membership engagement on LinkedIn increases by 50%. As a result, more and more companies are paying attention to their brand presence on the platform. When was the last time you updated your LinkedIn Page? If you can’t remember, it’s likely time for an update.

Our top recommendation for optimizing your LinkedIn Page is to include elements like a relevant cover image, descriptions and links to your website. The more updated and accurate the information, the more credible your page.

2. Create valuable content. How are you figuring out which topics to cover and what types of content to create? Understanding the conversations your target audience is engaging in and their content consumption preferences is critical to the success of your organic presence.

We recommend keeping an eye on LinkedIn’s trending storylines for relevant topics you can weigh in on. As you develop your approach to building your organic reach on LinkedIn, keep in mind that video content will be the driving factor behind 85% of US search traffic by 2019. Moreover, company updates that include links earn up to 45% higher follower engagement.

3. Create a simple content calendar and plan to post helpful content daily. Come up with a plan of the topics you’ll cover. This will keep you on track while keeping you accountable! If possible, post daily to deliver a steady stream of content and encourage ongoing engagement with your target audience.

4. Harness the reach of your employees. Content shared by employees has 2X the engagement of content shared by a company. With that in mind, ask 3-5 execs or subject matter experts in your company to share your posts regularly and craft their own content that you can amplify in return.

5. Analyze your organic performance. Your content is only valuable if people know about it, which is why both your organic and paid media strategies need to work in tandem to maximize your reach. Study the Analytics page associated with your LinkedIn Page to see monthly engagement metrics. Using Content Suggestions, you can measure each post’s popularity and level of interaction. Once you identify which organic posts drive the highest engagement, invest in LinkedIn paid ads to promote them.